Trump agrees to Pelosi’s demand to delay State of the Union address

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Updated
10:10 pm PST, Wednesday, January 23, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump said late Wednesday that he would deliver his State of the Union address once the federal government reopens, capping a day of brinkmanship with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told the president that he was not welcome to deliver the speech in the House chamber while the government is partly closed.

“As the Shutdown was going on, Nancy Pelosi asked me to give the State of the Union Address,” Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after 11 p.m., hours after he had said he would look for another venue for the speech. “I agreed. She then changed her mind because of the Shutdown, suggesting a later date. This is her prerogative — I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over.”

The president’s seeming capitulation came even as House Democratic leaders said they were prepared to give him a substantial sum of money for border security — perhaps even the $5.7 billion he has requested — but not for a wall and not until he agreed to reopen the government. That figure is roughly double what Democrats had previously approved.

On the other end of the Capitol, in the Republican-controlled Senate, lawmakers prepared for crucial votes Thursday on two competing proposals — one backed by Trump and Senate Republicans, the other by Democrats — that would bring an end to the partial shutdown, though neither might garner the 60 votes necessary for passage.

On Day 33 of the longest government shutdown in history, Washington took on the air of a split-screen television. On one side was a spat between Trump and Pelosi — a powerful man and an equally powerful woman — over the president’s constitutional duty to periodically report to Congress on the state of the union. On the other, the House and Senate trudged along with their daily business, with lawmakers in both parties grasping for a way out of the shutdown stalemate.

It now seems all but certain that 800,000 federal employees who have been either furloughed or working without pay for more than a month will miss another paycheck Friday. The best hope, people in both parties say, is that the expected failure of both bills in the Senate on Thursday will prompt bipartisan negotiations that could lead to a compromise.

Those bills take very different approaches. Trump’s bill would include $5.7 billion for the wall and extend protections to some immigrants in the country illegally — protections that he himself revoked — while sharply curtailing access to asylum. The Democrats’ measure would simply fund shuttered government agencies through Feb. 8, with no wall money.

But with House members set to leave town Thursday, it is highly unlikely that the impasse will end by Tuesday, when Trump is scheduled to deliver his address, an annual Washington ritual that usually plays out with pomp in front of both chambers of Congress, the Supreme Court, Cabinet secretaries and honored guests.